Special prosecutor Angela Corey threw the book at Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman, bringing the maximum possible charge of second-degree murder. Corey said she went where the facts led her. Cynics might say she went with the path that would...

As I wrote in my Sunday print column, the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case has the potential to expose racial fault lines in this country like nothing since the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial. The latest evidence of that: the flap...

VALDOSTA, Ga. — Brian Bell has felt the eyes upon him for two years. Everywhere he goes, people look at him and wonder.
Is he a football hero or a murderer?
There is plenty of hard evidence for the former and barely a speck for the latter. But...

Undoubtedly there are people who wonder why we are still talking about the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis. The young Floridians were shot years ago; their killers' trials are over.
Those people are the ones who should see "The Trayvon/...

Historian Brenda E. Stevenson (pictured in her UCLA office, with an African sculpture) mostly writes about the long-gone — 18th and 19th century African Americans, and the lives of enslaved women. Then came the case that made history while L.A....

Well, that didn't take long.
A week's worth of testimony in the George Zimmerman trial is in the books. And anyone who still believes the nonsense that race wouldn't play a starring role in this legal drama had better consult the playbill.
Ladies and gentlemen, race has taken the stage, together with last week's reluctant co-star: Rachel "Diamond" Jeantel.
The state's star witness, she was the last person — excluding Zimmerman — to speak with Trayvon Martin before Zimmerman shot the teen...

The lack of indictments in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner has sparked huge protests across the country. And those demonstrations need to stop.
I get that people aren’t happy; I’m not either. I believe the protesters have good intentions at heart. But, at best, their actions might get one of the decisions revisited, which won’t bring Brown or Garner back.
I think many protesters take to the streets to feel good about themselves while also exerting the least possible...

In September, I received an email that should have left me feeling vindicated.
It was in response to the nonfatal shooting of Levar Jones, an unarmed African-American man, by Sean Groubert, a white South Carolina state trooper. Groubert would later claim he shot Jones because Jones came at him in a menacing way. But this lie was unmasked by Groubert's own dashcam video, which shows Jones complying with the trooper's orders until Groubert inexplicably panics and starts shooting.
That video moved a reader...

The Orlando Sentinel's first Floridian of the Year for 1983 was a strong-willed woman who slugged it out with this state's power brokers.
Coincidentally, so is our 30th honoree, Deirdre Macnab.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas wasn't afraid to fight for their beliefs, even when confronted with powerful special interests. Neither is Macnab.
Douglas wanted to save Florida's Everglades. Macnab wants to protect Florida's voters.
The two bookends are representative of the people who came in between.
Over the...

Once upon a time, the liberal position was to reject the old discriminatory branding of people by the color of their skins rather than by the content of their characters.
Not now. Political and career advantage is found in trumpeting -- or occasionally making up -- genealogies.
Take the inexact category of Latino or Hispanic -- an often constructed identity that increasingly no one quite knows how to define. Almost anyone can be a Latino or Hispanic, from a fourth-generation American with one-quarter...

Five St. Louis Rams felt a higher calling Sunday. They took the field during pregame introductions displaying the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" gesture.
At the risk of sounding like a St. Louis County grand juror, I would have preferred different choreography.
Hands Down, Play Ball.
Please?
It felt as if the only thing on TV last week was riots, reaction and talking heads yammering about what the lack of an indictment against a cop in the Michael Brown shooting death means to America. When I sought...